2012-09-06

“Queen of Cocaine” Assassinated in Colombia

Colombia's 'Queen of Cocaine' Griselda Blanco was gunned down in Medellín, on September 4. (Photo: AFP / Florida DOC )

AFP

Colombian drug queen Griselda Blanco, known in 1970 as “the Queen of Cocaine,” and precessor of feared boss Pablo Escobar in the smuggling of cocaine to the United States, was shot dead by a hit man in Medellín (northwest), said authorities on September 4.

The crime occurred on the evening of September 3, when the 69-year-old woman was leaving a butcher shop in the neighborhood of Belén, in the city of Medellín. The hit man, who was driving a motorcycle, shot her in the head twice.

According to reports from authorities, Blanco had returned to Colombia in 2004, after serving part of a 60-year imprisonment sentence in the United States, to which she was sentenced in 1985.

Fabio Castillo, Colombian journalist and author of the book “Los jinetes de la cocaína” (Riders of Cocaine), which tells the country’s history of drug trafficking, pointed out that Blanco initially worked for the first cocaine cartel that existed in the Medellín, headed by Alfredo Gómez, alias “El Padrino” or “The Godfather”.

According to Castillo, Blanco’s “function, in reality, was to create the mechanisms in which to launder the cash obtained from the drug trafficking network of Gómez,” whose organization began to crumble in 1976, with the capture and prosecution of its principal contacts in New York.

But with her experience, the woman, who was also known as “La Madrina” or “The Godmother”, organized a powerful drug trafficking network, which mainly employed mules or human female carriers, to transport the drugs.

According to estimates by authorities, Blanco’s organization smuggled 1,500 kilos of cocaine a month to the United States. She was the first to use the route from Colombia to Florida, which was later inherited by Escobar, considered Colombia’s main drug dealer.

The Colombian authorities do not have information about the woman having re-offended since her return to Colombia and settlement in Medellín, where she kept a low profile.

Although very little official documentation exists about her, some reports agree that Blanco, was characterized with a violent personality from a very young age,, to the point that she was capable of kidnapping a 10-year-old child of a wealthy family and then kill him with one shot, when she was 11 years old, while in the company of a group of beggar children.

She was also blamed for the murder of two of her three husbands; the second of them, Alberto Bravo, in a shooting in broad daylight in a parking lot of a Bogotá nightclub in 1975, where Blanco arranged a meeting with him shortly after arriving from the United States in her private jet.

Blanco’s personality is known by one of her main obsessions, the movie The Godfather, which led her to baptize one of her sons as Michael Corleone Sepúlveda.

In her criminal record, Colombian authorities claim she was responsible for about 250 murders, including those of her two husbands.

Blanco was also known by her extravagant luxuries, including a taste for diamonds, several of which, it was said, had belonged to Argentina’s first lady Eva Perón, specifically a ring that Blanco often wore.

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1 Comment

juan de leon| 2012-10-01

The world of drugs is a fictional world for many who do not know or see how big that evil to humans is. All drug lords will meet their fate, one way or another. Good has exterminated even worse things. Some day this scourge that is killing humanity will end.